52 Days to Compbells

Is the list of participants finalized yet?. I'm sure the invited Americans will be there but what about Miki, Shizuka, Carolina and Irina? Also Takeshi, Brian, Evgeny and Emanuel? Have they all accepted?

There are 8 Ladies and 7 Men. Do you think they are holding a place for Michael to accept?

I'm not so excited about the skaters that have been invited this year....I miss Fumie...I want to see her :(

You're not a lone!
I'm a huge Fumie fan. I was really hoping she would still magically get invited despite a bad ending to her season since this is the first time I'll be watching skating live. I am looking forward to seeing all of these other skaters though. They've been running ads with all of the names of those invited in the ads still, which may not mean anything or it may mean they are coming. I don't know! lol.

Why were Irina and Kostner invited, but not Fumie?
Fumie is the reigning GPF champion, and many felt she was undermarked in the LP at Worlds. (Some people felt Fumie should've beaten Sasha in the LP.)
Please explain why she wasn't invited?

I can't understand it either. Maybe they figure Shizuka and Miki are the new hotshots from Japan, so people want to see them more so than Fumie. Fumie did have a bad final placement at Worlds (despite her great LP), and also a bad final skate of the season.

Not only is Fumie that GP champion, she also was the belle of the ball on the COI tour. In the recent Blades on Ice feature on COI the reviewer says. "In many ways, the finest performance came from Fumie Suguri."

Maybe she (also Michael Weiss?) was invited, but chose not to participate.

If it has to do with the Worlds results, then I think it makes sense to invite Ando and Arakawa over Suguri. Suguri was the bronze medallist in 2002 and 2003, therefore she got invited to the other events in those years.

I think it has more to do with selling tickets than with placement at worlds. For sure, if I were the Campbell's Soup company I would be inviting the folks that I thought the audience wants most to see.

Irina S. (a perennial crowd favorite as well as a past champion), Jenny Kirk, and Amber Corwin (but they're Americans) all finished lower than Suguri at Worlds. Maybe there is a national quota -- no more than two commpetitors from any other country besides the U.S.

Sokolova (then World silver medalist, plus she's a gorgeous beauty) was invited last year, and she tried the best she could while coping with injury.

What i thought was funny was the Olympic year. Only American skaters were invited. At the time I thought the reason was so we wouldn't be giving any help to our foes that year.

MM I think you might be right about the "selling tickets" part, and the limit as to how many skaters can participate.

Since it is an American event, I think they will want a few Americans at that event as well as some people from other countries. I don't know why they picked the people they did, but I think Arakawa and Ando are (in general) generating more interest (heading up) than Suguri (her best days behind her?) as far as Japanese skaters are concerned, therefore why they left her out.